Development and Replication of a Genome-Wide Polygenic Risk Score for Chronic Back Pain.

Chronic back pain (CBP) is a complex heritable trait and a major cause of disability worldwide. We developed and validated a genome-wide polygenic risk score (PRS) for CBP using a large-scale GWAS based on UK Biobank participants of European ancestry (N = 265,000). The PRS showed poor overall predictive ability (AUC = 0.

Association Between Human Gut Microbiome and N-Glycan Composition of Total Plasma Proteome.

Being one of the most dynamic entities in the human body, glycosylation of proteins fine-tunes the activity of the organismal machinery, including the immune system, and mediates the interaction with the human microbial consortium, typically represented by the gut microbiome. Using data from 194 healthy individuals, we conducted an associational study to uncover potential relations between the gut microbiome and the blood plasma N-glycome, including N-glycome of immunoglobulin G. While lacking strong linkages on the multivariate level, we were able to identify associations between alpha and beta microbiome diversity and the blood plasma N-glycome profile.